It's your turn. You can decide whether someone is going to attain their dream school or will be going to their safety. Before you vote to accept, deny, or waitlist this person ask yourself: Is this someone I would want to be friends with? What is his passion? What makes her tick? What will he add to the campus? What type of person is this? Have fun and be kind.

Learning to Fly

I had never felt so much fear in my entire life. Did my parents honestly expect me to control that hideous mechanical monstrosity?! I could swear it was glaring at me, those bright yellow eyes piercing into my soul as it prepared to engulf me like a piece of meat. I was terrified, and yet the supposed hero in my life, my father, was leaning casually against the beast's curved hide beaming like he had just won the lottery. Great, the beast had powers of persuasion that even I could not match. The beast's name was Pontiac Grand Am, and I was destined to be its master.

Not a single person I knew could comprehend this irrational fear I had of driving. The vast majority of teenagers are practically counting down the seconds until they are old enough to take that first spin around the block. Once again, though, I discovered myself steering away from the pack as I desperately tried to find ways to delay the inevitable. It was not until the spring of my Junior year, after much nagging from my parents, that an envelope arrived for me with that ticket to adulthood stashed inside. My driver's license. I constantly consider the irony of this lovely little piece of plastic. How, with a stomp of my foot or a clench of my fist, I could snap this oh-so-wonderful object in two, and yet the strength and power that it entitles is almost unfathomable. With a driver's license the once immobile are now free to soar across blackened pavement, free to take off from the nest and soar into the unknown! It was the first step into adulthood, and one of the final steps taken out of childhood.

It was this sudden realization, this revelation that I was suddenly becoming an adult, that compelled me to cling to whatever remnants of childhood I could still hold within my aging grasp. It was the most sobering moment of my life to know that, not only did I fail to receive my letter to Hogwarts, but Peter Pan had also flown by my window without even a dusting of pixie dust to take me to Neverland. The ticket had been handed to me, and the tools to set this new life in motion were dangling from the outstretched hand of my father. Waiting to be taken in stride.

I remember standing there, unsure of whether to accept my fate, or continue rebelling against the fact that time would not slow down for me. I considered all of my friends racing down the highways without a care in the world, their wheels taking them farther and farther from their toys and their games. I considered the lack of stress my parents would have to face if I grasped those keys, but mostly I considered my mother's face, waving at me from the window. The pride, the love that my parents showed me pushed me towards those keys. Pushed me towards the edge of the nest with the knowledge that I would do them proud and always return to them. Stilling my shaking hands I forced the key into the ignition, leaping from the nest and soaring into the sky.